The Canadian Globe and Mail reports:

Trade Minister Michael Fortier and his staff have been engaged for the past two months with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and the representatives of European governments in an effort to begin what a senior EU official involved in the talks described in an interview yesterday as “deep economic integration negotiations.”

The new deal will be wider in scope than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, The USA and Mexico. It will cover free trade in goods, services and skilled labor. It will also create an open market in government services and procurement.

Previous attempts at a deal between Canada and the EU have failed. However, there is greater political will for a deal since the breakdown of the Doha round of the World Trade Organization talks in July.

Some Canadians see this new deal as a way of balancing NAFTA. They consider Canada has become too dependant on one market. In the current US presidential campaign, candidates, including Barack Obama, have promised to renegotiate NAFTA.

Skilled Canadians might be attracted to the idea of being able to travel and work freely in any of the 27 EU member states.

But unless Canada also liberalizes inter-province trade, there will be a strange situation where it will be easier for an EU based company to trade anywhere in Canada, than for a Canadian one.

There is concern among provincial governments that EU services companies will out-compete previously protected Canadian ones for government contracts. Even though, the ultimate beneficiaries of such competition are Canadian consumers of those services.

If the deal goes through, Canada will be the first non-European state to have such extensive a trade deal with the EU. It will then have a similar problem to countries such as Norway and Switzerland. These find themselves directly affected by decisions made by EU institutions, without a seat at the table when those decisions are being made.

No different from NAFTA some may say.

Do you think Canada and the EU should enter into such a comprehensive trade deal?